A Sequel Means More

I wanted to blog about this some months ago, but instead I masked it with a much more politely vague post about what makes for a good concert. However, recent details of the ‘Distant Worlds II: More Music from Final Fantasy’ concert have surfaced and all but changed my viewpoint on staying polite about it.

What I speak of is that a few months ago, I went to the Wolftrap theatre for a live performance of Final Fantasy music, entitled Distant Worlds II: More Music From Final Fantasy, orchestrated by Nobuo Uematsu and conducted by Arnie Roth. Needless to say, it was an incredible concert. But that’s no surprise, I knew it would be incredible. I went to the first Distant Worlds concert in March ’08 at the Chicago Rosemont Theatre. However, there was one clear difference between Distant Worlds I and Distant Worlds II. 

At the first concert, they couldn’t have done a better job. They gave equal treatment to the entire series, playing music from Final Fantasy I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, and even the black sheep XI. Each title got at least one song, even if I, II and III were lumped into a medley. Seeing Liberi Fatali, To Zanarkand, and One Winged Angel performed live, there’s really nothing else like it, and I highly recommend everyone go to a symphonic video game concert of any kind at some point in their lives.

My complaint in question was that Distant Worlds II, advertised as a sequel to the first concert, was hardly a sequel at all. This new concert was just a rehash of 90% of the original concert, and only added a mere five new songs had been added. Now, as disappointed as I was that only five new songs were present, I was actually angry to find out that a total of 11 songs were actually added to the concert lineup, but they left six of them out. I don’t know about anyone else, but I really would have killed to here Dancing Mad, or the English premier of Suteki Da Ne performed live. And one, elusive song, Kiss Me Goodbye isn’t even yet available in .mp3 format, so I can’t even hear a decent quality of that song as only the low quality version of it on youtube. On top of that, I found out it was like this at every concert other than Stockholm. Stockholm is the only place that all 11 new songs were played. I was also disheartened to find out that special guest Susan Calloway was supposed to be there to perform the vocal themes of Final Fantasy IX, X, XI and XII. Though I’m more understanding on that issue considering there could have been scheduling conflicts.

As enjoyable as the concert still was, this news was very unsettling for quite some time considering I’m a huge fan of not only the series itself, but the music of the series in particular, and I felt I was cheated out of a concert. Instead of Distant World II, I got Distant Worlds 1.3, I found out recently that they’re “for the first time ever” performing all of these songs at the Chicago Rosemont theatre in the coming months. In addition to that, there have been three new songs have been added to the lineup recently, and another premier on its way in the coming months. That will make four new songs that I will have now missed out on because they weren’t a part of the concert I originally paid for.

My question is this. Why? Why is it that the good people of Stockholm are treated to the concert that we all deserve, a properly constructed sequel with eleven new songs added to the lineup, but everyone else only gets some of it? If you ask me, it’s a poor marketing strategy. This isn’t James Cameron’s Avatar, where if we want the extra 18 minutes of bonus footage, we just rebuy the collector’s edition at our local retail store. This is an orchestra. We can’t just shell out between $50 and $150 bucks, not to mention travel all around the country, nay, all around the world to different venues just to see a few additional songs. All this does is make the majority of the fanbase miss out on the makings of a potentially great addition to the franchise. Even though the orchestra was obviously stellar, I expect a little more out of a sequel than just the original title with a little extra bonus content.

Halloween Top 20 (4/4)

Halloween is just around the corner. Actually it’s tomorrow, so let’s wrap this bad boy up with a few more games.

Silent Hill: Homecoming (2008)

I seem to be alone in loving this game. Most fans who played this said it was an abomination to the series, shouting that the game has little to no psychology in comparison to previous titles, and that the plot twist should disallow the character to be so skilled in combat. Well they’re not wrong in those aspects. However, while the majority of the monsters don’t have to do with the protagonist, Alex Shepherd’s nightmares, the bosses do, and they almost make up for that. The bosses in this game are some of the best, scariest, most challenging, and powerfully psychological the series has seen thus far. As for Alex’s abilities, no he probably shouldn’t possess his expert fighting prowess, but then Harry, James, Heather, and Henry all possessed decent fighting abilities when faced with mortal danger, so what makes Alex any different? But now I’m rambling. Silent Hill Homecoming has a really chilling story with a nice amount of twists, and a good mix of pop-up scares with terrifying ambience. As most Silent Hill games go, it makes you wonder what the hell is going on up until the final revelation, but the graphics of the 360/PS3 really make for some impressive visual effects the series wasn’t even capable of until this point.

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (2003)

Fatal Frame as a series is a fantastically terrifying set of games. In my personal experience, they make for the scariest games out there. Fatal Frame II specifically follows the events of twin sisters, Mio and Mayu, walking around the woods until they stumble upon a haunted village. All of the villagers are dead and the village is cursed. Their salvation? They need to perform a ritual concerning twin siblings, where one twin has to murder the other, but surely these two won’t succumb to the village magic, right? Fatal Frame is your typical Japanese ghost story, but what sets it apart is the fact that your only weapon against these ghouls is an enchanted camera. Silly as it may sound, Fatal Frame takes a spin on the old saying of how a picture captures a piece of your soul, and uses this ideology to actually harm the ghosts. The better the picture, the more damage. This makes for an interesting parallax because it forces you to get closer to the ghosts, further terrifying the senses, in order to expel the creepy spectres. There are also a number of ghosts that aren’t hostile, meaning they won’t attack you, but you may still need a change of trousers after encountering them as they are no less scream-inducing. This game is beautiful when you’re not being haunted, surrounded by gorgeous Japanese-style visuals that will include zen gardens, wind chimes, and deer scares, with sound effects and ambience to follow. But otherwise the experience is in general horrifying as every corner you round could put you in mortal danger. 

American McGee’s Alice (2000)

Alright, so this game isn’t technically a “horror” title per se, though the environments fit it well enough. American McGee’s cult classic, Alice, takes a new spin on Lewis Carroll’s timeless novels “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”. The twist? Everything, as in the whole game is twisted. A young girl named Alice obsesses over the Alice in Wonderland stories. One night, however, a house fire causes her parents to burn to death while Alice herself barely manages to make it out alive. The event traumatizes her, and something in her fractures. She is sent to a mental hospital where they attempt to pick up the pieces and help her regain her sanity. That’s where you, the player come in. You play as Alice within her own deluded mind of what used to be a wonderland. In here, the Cheshire Cat bares a sinister grin, the Duchess is hungry for blood, and the Mad Hatter’s madder than ever. Murder is an everyday event for this new take on Wonderland, and the Red Queen’s tyranny must come to an end. This game has an incredibly interesting take on the various characters and locations of Wonderland, and the majority of your weapons, called “toys”, are just that. Demon Dice, Spiked Jacks, a Croquet Mallet, etc. After ten years, a sequel has been announced for the Xbox 360, so you’d better hurry up and play its predecessor l before this new one comes out.

Bioshock (2007)

This is the only title on my list that I haven’t actually finished. As such, I can’t say that I personally recommend it, but I’ve heard great things. Even though I don’t personally find first person shooters to have that same kind of scare that most survival-horror games possess. Plus the fact that it is a first person shooter by classification, and not a survival horror series specifically. In fact, I almost didn’t include this for those very reasons. But then I remembered the first time I played and pissed off a Big Daddy. He was really defensive over the Little Girl he walked around with, and I wasn’t sure how to progress any further, so I tossed a tin can at him. His yellow eyes turned blood red and he charged full speed towards me, drill at the ready, and I’ve never been more terrified in my life. I panicked trying to throw everything I could find at him, unleashing all the ammo I have into him, electrocuting him, anything I could think of but this guy was absolutely relentless. If the rest of the game is anything like that, I suppose it qualifies for recommendation. It was either this or another Silent Hill title (1 or 3), or Fatal Frame III, but I’m trying to keep it well rounded and not make the majority of the list split between three series.

Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of Orpheo’s Curse (1994)

“Do you believe in magic? Is magic only an illusion created by a stage magician? Well, there’s an old saying, ‘seeing is believing’”. This is the opening line of one of my favorite childhood games. Based on the Nickelodeon show, the game centers around the midnight society inducting you as their newest member. But your test is to tell them a chilling ghost story. The story you tell involves a brother/sister pair entering an old abandoned theatre called “Orpheo’s Palace”. Rumored to have been shut down fifty years ago after it’s head magician, Orpheo, went mad and all of the staff, including himself, died during various magic acts, the theatre was shut down for good. Well it turns out those rumors are true, and you encounter Orpheo upon entering, and he’s still trying to get a magic act right, so he volunteers you for his next act. Tonight. The pair are separated, and you switch off playing as each, coming across the ghosts of the various assistants who perished long ago, including Felicia of the guillotine trick, Roberta who played the woman sawed in half, and the Amazing Aldo who escaped every trick but the water box. The music is chilling, and Orpheo occasionally stalks you or tells you how much he’s looking forward to your performance at midnight via the intercom. The environments are lush and there’s a ton of things to explore, though examining the wrong wax skeleton may initiate a chase scene, and you’d better know where to go if you want to live. There’s a huge amount of puzzles, a fair amount of chases (each with heart pounding music), and multiple endings depending on how much of the mystery you manage to solve. I doubt anyone reading this will actually have access to this game, and I realize it’s really old, but if you ever get the chance, please try it out. If for no reason other than to bring back nostalgia over the Are You Afraid of the Dark crew.

Making this list has really showed me something. Either I really haven’t played as many scary games as I thought I did, or maybe there just aren’t enough good scary titles that don’t already have day jobs of being a first-person shooter. But whichever the reason, this list was hard to make. But if you’re looking for a good, scary game experience, Resident Evil 3, Resident Evil 4, Eternal Darkness, Clock Tower 3, Haunting Ground, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Fatal Frame II, American McGee’s Alice, Bioshock, and Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale Of Orpheo’s Curse, all fit the cut. Happy Haunting!

Halloween Top 20 (3/4)

I'm back with the third part of my Halloween List. I've got five more good, scary movies for you to watch this Halloween season.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

This one didn’t hit off as well with the critics, but it did do fairly well with the fans. Either way, I liked it. I hadn’t seen the original Exorcist until about three years after I saw this, so I didn’t know what a movie about exorcism would be like. This movie was pretty disturbing however. It features a young woman who suddenly begins acting strange. She starts seeing disturbing imagery, she losing control of her mind and body, she crawls around like a spider, she speaks in tongues, she screams and roars at everything. Conclusion: she’s been possessed by the devil. The movie isn’t entirely centered around her exorcism however. A concurrent storyline is about the pastor who exorcised her. He manages to relieve her of the devil, but is unable to save her life, and so his methods are called into question as to whether or not they were ethical. The movie itself stands alone well enough, but what really makes it disturbing is watching it knowing that it’s based on a true story. Of course, “based on” can be a pretty loose term, but just knowing that events like this have happened to people kind of sends shivers down your spine.

Orphan (2009)

This is one cah-reepy movie. It follows a family who looks into adopting a young Russian girl named Esther. But Esther isn’t like most 9-year old girls; she’s psychotic. Aside from the creepiness in general she tends to carry around on her persona, there’s just something very off about her. She makes decisions and talks in manners that many will find unnerving. She persuades her adoptive sister to do bad things, and she brings physical harm to her adoptive brother, all the while threatening to kill either of them if they ever bring word to her adoptive parents. And then she gets a weird obsession with her new father, and we’re not talking a cute schoolgirl crush on her Math Teacher. I mean this girl wants mommy out of the picture. With an overall super creepy vibe and an ending I never would have seen coming, Orphan definitely delivered.

Last House on the Left (2009)

Not that I’m trying to spoil the movie or anything, but you know how sometimes you get a real douche of a villain, but they manage to get away without you, the viewer, getting the satisfaction of watching them get mutilated in return? This movie is for you. This movie features a band of villains that kidnap, rape and kill a pair of best friends that unfortunately end up in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. Well, as it turns out, one of the girls actually manages to get away, and word is gotten to her parents what happened, and the whole dichotomy of the movie shifts as now it’s the villains’ turn to take a chance at survival. I’m hardly a sadist, but it’s oh so satisfying to watch such awful people get just what they deserve.

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

I haven’t seen this movie in a long while, but what has always stood out to me with this title is the lack of gore. This movie probably has more character deaths than any other on my list, yet in return has the least amount of blood. The story follows the headless horseman, terrorizing a village, riding around lopping off the heads of the villagers, trying to find a replacement. So the movie is just chop, chop, exposition, chop, chop chop, yet no blood. This only further proves my belief that you don’t need wild gory deaths to have a good, scary movie. Saw VI? Lots of gore, terrible movie. Sleepy Hollow? Minimal gore, great movie. If this description isn’t enough for you, it’s made by Tim Burton, featuring Johnny Depp and Christopher Walken [when he was still playing villainous roles], with Danny Elfman on music. This should be a no brainer.

The Others (2001)

I love a good ghost story. Events of the supernatural are something that no human truly understands. Included in this is Grace Stewart, played by Nicole Kidman. Grace is a mother of two with a husband at war. Her tightly knit family lives humbly in a quiet country home, and life in general seems to be pretty normal. Her children develop a disease that makes them weak to sunlight, but nothing too out of the ordinary. Well, not until ghosts inhabit the house. Suddenly strange events begin to take place. The little girl is drawing pictures of a family she keeps seeing. A scary old woman appears wearing the daughter’s clothing. Someone hides the curtains, endangering the children. These events leave Grace certain that these are hostile ghosts that wish to bring harm to her poor children, but perhaps that’s not the whole story. Pay attention all the way through, because there may just be another surprise in story.

Well that’s it for my movie list. Saw 1, Saw 2, Final Destination, Disturbia, Thirteen Ghosts, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Orphan, Last House on the Left, Sleepy Hollow, and the Others are ten good, scary movies for you to enjoy this Halloween. The list ends next time. 

Halloween Top 20 (2/4)

The Halloween Haunt continues. But this time with a few good survival horror games thrown at you. I’ll finish my movie coverage next time, but for now, let me throw a few good scary games at you.

Resident Evil 3 (1999)

The Resident Evil series as a whole is a good survival horror franchise, and I would honestly recommend RE 1, 2, 3, and 4. But for the sake of redundancy, I’ll not fill the entire list with Resident Evil titles. Despite Resident Evil 2 being my personal favorite of the old-school generation (and the series as a whole, really), what stands out about Resident Evil 3 is the fact that you’re being stalked by Nemesis throughout the entirety of the game. You play as Jill Valentine, one of the four primary protagonists of the series, and you’re caught in the middle of the massive T-Virus outbreak of Raccoon city. Jill tries to escape the city before it’s nuked via government missiles, but Umbrella Corp’s latest bio-weapon seems to be a constant blockade in your path. Nemesis tends to show up at the most inconvenient of times, and often forces you in a series of heart pounding, split second decisions on how to shake him, the outcome of which may effect your fate. You can never seem to get a moment of rest in this game, and just as you do start to feel comfortable, he shows up again, so it keeps you on your feet at all times.

Resident Evil 4 (2005)

As I said before, I won’t flood the list with Resident Evil titles, but I figured I’d recommend one more. Again, Resident Evil 2 is my personal favorite, but Resident Evil 4 is a close second. RE4 isn’t so much a scary title, though it’s not without its moments. There are some pretty horrifying enemies you come across (Regenerators, Iron Maidens, and Los Garradores come to mind), but there’s also that sense of panic you get when you enter a seemingly innocent village, only to have every villager swarm to you like you’re Thanksgiving dinner; which in retrospect isn’t that far off. The story is a bit of a departure from the past series, but the gameplay is a huge improvement. It’s a lot more tactful, and you can actually aim your guns to wherever you want to shoot. Not that I don’t appreciate the older titles, but since these “zombies” are smarter and more tactful, it makes sense that I would be too. Like the Star Wars series, RE1-3 and RE4/5 feel like two separate series, both having their share of positives over the other. RE4 sacrifices some of the scares for a more pleasurable gameplay experience. But unlike RE5, does not sacrifice the “Horror” in “Survival Horror” entirely.

Eternal Darkness (2002)

Eternal Darkness is not what you’d expect of a survival horror game. It’s not actually scary. I can count on half of a hand how many times I was actually spooked by something, and that’s attributed by a number of reasons. The lighting in the game isn’t very dark, there’s all of maybe two pop-out scenarios, and it’s actually a well written piece of work, showing off good story rather than focusing on scaring. So why on earth am I recommending it? Because it encompasses an incredibly genius sanity system. As you encounter supernatural beings, your sanity meter steadily depletes, and the lower it gets, the more “sanity effects” you endure. These effects range anywhere from visuals of bloody walls or upside-down rooms, to audio effects like screams or children crying, to 4^th wall effects like lowering the volume, pretending to erase your memory card, or a fake ending after only two hours of play. The list of effects goes on and on and is so vast, I rarely encountered the same effect twice, and this is a game that plays through the stories of twelve separate characters, each with their own story, location, time period and statistics; though all tie into the same story. It’s lengthy, the story is interesting, there’s a major choice made in the beginning that effects how the rest of the game pans out, and it holds a fantastic sanity system. Who cares that it isn’t scary?

Clock Tower 3 (2003)

The subject of actual terror has been addressed a few times already. Is Clock Tower 3 terrifying? Well the answer is yes, and then no. Unfortunately the best part of Clock Tower 3 is the first 25% of it, and it gets gradually less horrifying and more nonsensical throughout. So lemme dish the dirt. Clock Tower is a series revolving around a similar concept of Resident Evil 3. Not in terms of story, but in terms of getting the hell out of there. Clock Tower 3 involves six psychotic serial killers chasing you around London. Each killer is distinct, and allegedly more dangerous than the last. But the first one is the one I find to be most terrifying. He goes by the alias “Sledgehammer”, and as his name implies, his first appearance involves him bludgeoning a 13-year old girl in the back of the head. He’s horrifying. He has a creepy voice, a terrifying costume, strange habits like sniffing around for his prey, and he sometimes drops down from the catwalks, landing with a loud BANG, cutting your morning jog abruptly short. The gameplay involves, literally, trying to outrun these guys, but you can’t simply outrun them. You’ll be making use of hiding spots and evade points, which are mini cutscenes that involve you knocking them out in some manner. Again, after Sledgehammer, the game becomes progressively less scary, and the end of it is downright cheesy. But I’d recommend at least playing through the first level, maybe even the first two.

Haunting Ground (2005)

This game was made by the same people behind the Clock Tower series, so the gameplay is pretty similar. You play as a girl named Fiona who wakes up one night inside a cage in a castle basement, surrounded by meat cleavers, and raw steaks made out of things that we doubtfully hope are cows, and she’s clad in nothing but a towel. Throughout the course of the game, the various tenants of the castle stalk you for varying reasons, and it’s your job to progress in the storyline without getting killed by them. This once again involves finding hiding spots and using other methods of slowing them down. However, unlike Clock Tower 3, you actually have ways of harming them. Not to the point of killing them of course, but you can at least stun them. Also paired with you this time around is a dog named Hewie. You can train the dog by praising or scolding him whenever he does or doesn’t protect you, which will either increase or decrease his likelihood of helping in the future. You’ll need Hewie to reach areas you can’t reach yourself, and unlike Alessa in Clock Tower 3, Fiona was obviously on a track team at some point in her life, because this chick can actually run. And run she will, because also unlike Clock Tower 3, these enemies DO progressively become more horrifying. While most of them don’t physically look scary, they each have their own personalities, mannerisms, and attacks that really make you wanna get the hell out of there. The only cost of this development is the fact that each person’s section seems to last shorter than the previous. Aside from the very end of this game, I’d say this game is overall an improved version of Clock Tower 3. If they can take this concept and improve it again for a console like the PS3 or 360, I’ll be set for life.

That’s it for today’s list. Check back in a few days for the last five movies on my Halloween Horror list.

Halloween Top 20 (1/4)

In the spirit of Halloween, my next few blog posts will be featuring lists of good scary movies and games to watch and play for Halloween. First I want to talk about a few movies. Now, the following movies define the word “scary” in different ways. Some are more psychological, rather than pop-out scares. But a good scary movie, in my opinion, does not rely on a) killing off as many people as possible, and b) killing people off in the bloodiest, most disgusting ways possible. Movies like that should really be their own genre because they’re not scary, and they’re not psychological; they’re just gross.

Now my picks aren’t necessarily my top 10, and they’re in no particular order. But they’re all movies that stuck out to me over the years, so think of them as nothing more than recommendations.  So without further ado…

Saw I & II (2004/2005)

Keep in mind I’m ONLY recommending the first two in the Saw series. The first movie presented one of the most brilliant villains of our lifetime. He’s a killer that doesn’t actually kill his victims. The famed Jigsaw killer goes through a life changing experience that makes him appreciate the gift of life itself, and he wants others to experience this epiphany. He captures seemingly innocent people who don’t appreciate the precious gift that God has given them, and puts them into “traps” where they must sacrifice some pain and fight for their own survival. This is a brilliant concept. Every situation is escapable, and most directly reference the reason they’re there in the first place (such as a man who cuts himself being caught in a maze of razor wire), and with the exception of maybe one or two of them, the sacrifice seems pretty fair. Well, as fair as a psychopath can make it.

So why am I only recommending the first two? Because after that, the series goes downhill at an accelerated rate. Starting with the third movie, the traps start encompassing innocent peoples lives, so that their survival is in the hands of someone else. And there are even some that aren’t innocent, but it’s still not up to them if they survive. The series picks up again for the fifth movie, reverting back to mostly people who are in charge of their own fate. But the sixth is the absolute worst. It involves an insurance agent that has to choose, out of about 10 people, only about 4 of them can survive these trials. This is no longer the question of fighting for your life, this is now a selection of picking favorites. Basically, this is the complete opposite of Jigsaw’s original objective if no matter what, people will have to die in these traps. Regardless of the fact that these people are put in the hands of Jigsaw’s apprentice, they’re still Jigsaw’s traps that he planned to continue even after his death in the third movie. I can’t even begin to describe how thrilled I am that this series is FINALLY ending this month. The first two are great, but the series as a whole is just an excuse to kill people off in the most inhumane ways possible.

Final Destination (2000)

This is another movie like Saw. Not the content of it, but the fact that the first movie is brilliant, and everyone should see it. The following three movies, however, exploit the brilliant idea of the first movie in order to kill off as many people as they can in as horrifying of ways as possible. The setting of the first movie is a high school class goes on a field trip to Europe. One teenager has a vision of a plain crash, which ultimately causes him and six other individuals to safely get off the plane before takeoff, sparing them. But Death has other plans, and the students begin dying off post-crash, one-by-one, in the order they were supposed to die originally, in a series of freak accidents. They seem like freak twists of fate, but the movie is so chilling, it keeps you wondering if anyone can survive the cold grip of Death. Please watch this movie if you haven’t already. And do yourself a favor, never watch FD 2, 3, and 4.

Disturbia (2007)

This movie is more of a psychological thriller than a true blood horror movie. But it’s still quite good. This movie features a young man name Kale whose mother begins dating another guy after his father is killed in a car accident. There’s something off about this new guy though. The teenage boy feels that the new guy may be some psychopath, but seems harmless in person. Still, something rubs him the wrong way, and he’s got the sneaking suspicion this guy is a murderer, and Kale swears he partially witnessed him murdering another woman. However, considering Kale is on house arrest after a confrontation at his school, there’s not a whole lot he can do. Who is this guy exactly? Did Kale really see what he thought he saw? Can he prove it before it’s too late? Or will his mother be the next victim? Give it a watch, it’s good. 

Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

So this is the first movie on my list that’s like a true blood ghost film. It could just be my obsession with lists in numbers, but I love this movie. It’s from Dark Castle films, which does mean one thing: Gore. However, this movie’s not as bad as you might expect in that area. There’s not as many deaths in this films. The few deaths they have are horrific, but they’re still fairly few in number because there’s actually a plot to this. The film encompasses a family whose rich uncle has just passed on and left his estate to them. They are led to his estate where they are to spend the night. The estate in question is unlike any house I’ve ever seen before. Almost none of the walls are solid. As grandiose as it is, a house full of glass walls with weird writing all over just gives you a weird vibe, and it should. As it turns out, dear old Uncle had some skeletons in his closet, or ghosts in the basement rather, and a booby trap has caused them to be set free. As the title implies, there are 13 ghosts, each more terrifying than the last. They each have their own unique appearance and personality, and all of them make a sizeable appearance in the film. Well, actually, there were only 12 ghosts in the basement. So who’s the thirteenth? Watch it to find out.

So there’s five select titles to give a watch. The rest of the list will appear before Halloween. Keep an eye out for it.

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief (2/2)

The day I finished the book, Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, my friends and I watched the movie as a comparison. I found myself doing a lot of the same things I did while watching M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender. Every couple of minutes I would raise my hand and comment “er….that didn’t happen”.

---------Spoilers ahead for book as well as movie.--------

Percy Jackson, the movie, felt like a complete disconnect from the actual story. It’s almost a guarantee that a lot of great things will be left out of the movie, but some of the most important things in the book didn’t even exist in the movie. Ares puppeteering didn’t take place, in fact Ares wasn’t in the movie at all. He was kind of a big deal in the book. Kronos also wasn’t in the book, he’s the one pulling the strings behind Luke’s betrayal (and the entire Olympian doomseday prophecy). Clarisse is introduced as Percy’s major rival, yet she’s nowhere to be found in the movie. Pair that with the additional (yet more understandable) content left out, such as Cerberus, the Furies, and the Hephaestus trap, and the actual relevance toward the book is disappointing.

On top of things taken out, the movie added random things in too. In the book, Nereid offers Percy the three pearls just before he leaves for the underworld. The movie takes this and makes it the central plot point. In doing so, the Hydra is randomly thrown in, and upon reaching the underworld (and skipping through the majority of it), Persephone shows up and helps them escape. That doesn’t happen in the book, in fact, the entire second half of the movie was completely different. Percy’s mother escapes the underworld, no problem, Hades isn’t missing his Helm of Darkness, Grover volunteers to stay behind and get raped by Persephone in the underworld, Hades never finds out the truth behind the theft, and Luke openly admits to the theft and claims to be the mastermind behind the whole plan.

And even further than that, a lot of the character portrayals were just unlikeable. I can understand making them teenagers rather than children. Children are going to age much faster than they’ll be able to make these movies (then again, Harry Potter managed). Aside from that though, the demographic is a little more widespread. While 11-year old Harry Potter was in school for most of the first few books, these 12-year olds are traveling the country, battling dangerous beasts in search of an ultimate quest. But if you move past that, the individual characters were quite different from how they were in the book.

Starting with Annabeth, she came off as a mix between Annabeth and Clarisse, and there was a weird love-connection between her and Percy throughout the movie. I don’t know if they hook up later on, but it was not at all implied in the book. Grover is supposed to be scared, fragile, and unconfident in the book, feeling he has something to prove after screwing up bad previously. Yet, in the movie, he’s confident, he’s arrogant, he acts like Percy’s protective older brother willing to take on the world, and the truth of his past is never mentioned. Zeus is forgiving and even somewhat charitable, not demanding Percy leave after having just spared them of war. Hades is easily tricked and not scary at all. Charon is exactly what he should be like in the original myth, not how he’s described in the 21^st century, the list goes on and on. And that’s not even counting Annabeth’s brunette hair, Medusa’s Caucasian appearance, and countless other physical discrepancies.

----------------------------End Spoilers----------------------------

Ultimately, however, I’m left with a different feeling with Percy Jackson than I was Avatar.  Although Percy Jackson made almost all of the same mistakes that M. Night made with The Last Airbender, there were two major differences. First, I felt that the production value was higher with Percy Jackson. The visuals were better, the acting was much better, and it just had that finished finesse you expect to see in a film these days. Second, the film was decent as a stand-alone movie. Despite how much was changed from the book to the movie, the plot wasn’t rushed, the revised plot still worked out, and it actually made sense. If Percy Jackson the Book had never existed, this could actually be a decent movie. Unfortunately though, it just makes and my friends wonder just how they plan to handle the next four movies.

Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief (1/2)

So I’ve recently gotten back into reading. Yes, reading. Reading is a form of entertainment just as much as television, music, film, or video games. I’ve been wanting to open myself up to more entertainment mediums because of the field I’m entering, so I’m going to keep a checklist per month of books that I read, movies I see, television I watch, games I play, music I listen to, and anything in addition to that such as graphic novels or performances. But you can look for that at the end of the month.

The point of this article in particular is Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. I am currently on vacation with my school friends in Florida, and on the car ride down, the two that I happened to be riding with had already read it and were currently reading the rest of the series. Having a good 17 hours of driving ahead of me, I decided to pick it up and give it a shot.

I wasn’t very impressed with it at first. The writing felt juvenile, but I guess it makes sense because it’s clearly meant to be young adult fiction, possibly even children’s fiction. Even still, it felt I was reading a story I had written in tenth grade (which I happened to have re-read recently) and was giving me a sense of underdeveloped plot. Sentences were short, description was scarce, everything was a little too “too the point” and some of the plot points were just out-and-out silly. But the reason I gave it a shot in the first place was because it is so heavily based on Greek mythology. I’ve always been a sucker for Greek mythology, as were my comrades, so I kept reading.

It certainly got more addicting towards the middle. Once the actual quest started, I found it more difficult to put down. The premise of the story is that gods and monsters from Greek days of old existed then and still exist now. Ares, Medusa, the Lotus Eaters, everything from Hades to the Iliad is included here, and what I find interesting is the story’s interpretations of the characters. The gods and monsters have grown and evolved just as mankind has, so Zeus is wearing pinstripe and Medusa owns a statue emporium. But they’re the same gods and heroes as olden days, so seeing how they’ve changed over the past few millennia is interesting and fun to try and guess who their next supernatural encounter is.

If you’re into Greek mythology, give it a shot. If you want just a fun light-hearted story with an interesting take on and old mythos, try it out. There’s enough serious undertones in it so far, I mean remember how dark the first Harry Potter was? Exactly, and look where that story went. The way the stories are written show that the characters will be growing older and maturing as the quest gets darker and more important, so I’m sure it gets more serious throughout the books. The only other thing I can say is that the story does bare mild resemblance to Harry Potter. Confused boy hero, desires parental love, crappy homelife with an awful stepfather, cowardly but loyal male comrade, intelligent but somewhat snooty female comrade, destined jerk rival that loves beating him but hates losing (just wait till my father hears about this). All things aside though, I'm by no means saying this is a copy off of Harry Potter. It's still quite different. Really, if you can get past the mildly juvenile writing style, it’s a good read to try out.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2/2)

I had just finished the show, Avatar: The Last Airbender when the movie was released. I had heard how abysmally it did in the theatres, netting a pathetic 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. Granted, Rotten Tomatoes tends to be a bit harsher, where a good movie will receive a 70%. But to get an 8% is still quite an achievement. So after waiting a couple of months for Last Airbender to make its way to the dollar theatre, I finally saw it. I only had to pay $2.50 for this travesty, and even that was probably too expensive.

So what made The Last Airbender so bad? Well, M. Night was clearly given creative freedom for this production, and he made the most of it. In my previous article, I mentioned how the four nations in the show more or less represent the cultures of Japan, China, Tibet, and…wherever Inuits live. So why is it that a bunch of white kids replaced them for the movie? As it turns out, M. Night didn’t happen to like the white kids’ portrayals of characters. He specifically stated he wanted Caucasian children to be the ones auditioning.

As it turns out, even Zuko was originally supposed to be a white kid, but M. Night liked the Indian kid’s portrayal of him, so he changed the whole of the fire nation from Japanese, I mean Caucasian, to Middle Eastern. Zuko, Azula, Zhao, and Ozai, yes Ozai who’s not even supposed to be anything more than a silhouette in the first book shows up throughout the movie. Moreso, even the architecture of the Fire Nation was replaced with that of something you’re more likely to see in Indian culture, and their hairstyles were more American than anything. On top of that, the other three nations were a mixed salad of races if I’ve ever seen one. The Earth Kingdom was primarily Chinese looking, but there was a random African Tribe amongst them. The Southern Water Tribe was mostly Inuit citizens, with the exceptions of Katara, Sokka, and their grandmother, who were all mysteriously white. The Northern Water Tribe was mostly white, with a few darker skinned individuals thrown into the mix. The air nomads were part Tibetan, part Caucasian, part Indian, with a random black guy as Monk Giatsu. The races of all of the characters were just all wrong.

The sequence of events didn’t make sense either. They skipped over multiple plot lines, like the Kiyoshi warriors (and Suki altogether), Jet and his Freedom Fighters, Bumi and the city of Omashu, the pirates, the fortune teller’s love prediction, the Northern Air Temple, Aang’s first attempts at Earth and Fire bending, among others. I realize they can’t fit it all into at most a three-hour timeslot, but the only thing they even tried to incorporate was the Earth bender’s imprisonment, and that was probably only so they could include Earth bending at all. And even that was screwed up, because the Earth benders were surrounded by earth. They weren’t imprisoned at all!

It’s not even just because my friends and I are Avatar fans. I don’t believe this movie was good from a non-fan standpoint because the story was rushed, the acting was terrible, they were in too many places in too short of time, the dialogue was dramatized, the choreography was ridiculous, and the movie as a whole was just a mess. It felt as if he took his six favorite episodes, cut them into pieces, put them in a jar, shook them all up, mixed with wet plot devices and poured them out onto the editing table only to have them randomly taped together and put on the show floor as is.

The ending was different, the names weren’t pronounced correctly, the plot was out of sequence, Yue dies differently, Zuko’s scar is hardly visible, Pakku willingly teaches Katara, Sokka’s not comic relief, Aang isn’t light-hearted and childish, Aang is WAY too dramatic, the Avatar state is done at random times instead of during emotional turmoil, the giant blue monster never occurs at the end, the spirit world is always the same place, Roku’s dragon speaks to Aang instead of Roku himself, Katara’s grandmother willingly tells Katara to follow Aang, Zuko’s past is relayed via some random kid, bending requires a whole dance routine just to lift a rock, fire benders can only bend with already-existing fire, Iroh has dreadlocks, the water scroll is practically happened upon, Yue’s fiancé is nowhere to be found, Zhao instantly knows without proof who the Blue Spirit is, Aang’s capture is completely different, the list goes on and on and on.

Seeing this movie makes me wonder if M. Night even watched this show at all in the first place, considering Katara’s not a high-strung ninny, Sokka’s not the clumsy comic relief, Aang’s not a childish ball of sunshine, and Zuko’s not a vengeful douchebag. Not to mention that Aang became Ahng,  Sokka was Soak-ah, Iroh was Eeroh, and Agni Kai became Agni Kee, and not one character actually looks like they’re supposed to. Ultimately the movie was a box office failure, and it’s hard to believe that Paramount is more than happy to have M. Night finish the next two.  I don’t see how anyone can even look forward to an Airbender 2 and 3, even if M. Night somehow improves them because the first will still be horrendous. Like any good book, there’s just too much to the series to manage a perfect movie, but I think it’s possible to come close if it was at least two and a half hours long instead of a measly 90 minutes, had proper cultural casting, and M. Night was nowhere near the production of it.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (1/2)

So I recently got into Avatar: The Last Airbender. With the impending release of M. Night’s newest flop, all of my friends were shaking with excitement over the live action title. Being that I never watched Avatar before, my friends demanded I watch it before the movie come out, so I finally gave it a shot. Now, Nickelodeon hasn’t been the same since I was a kid. Without shows like Doug, Hey Arnold and Rugrats before they were All Grown Up, the channel of my youth just isn’t entertaining with all the CG shows and bad acting jobs done by Disney Channel flunkies who think screaming about nothing is funny. I assumed Avatar would be no different, but I was quite wrong.

Starting off, the first book didn’t hook me yet. It was better than I expected, but wasn’t the groundbreaking television series I had heard it was. But it gave me enough to keep me interested in Books 2 and 3. What I found in this show was a well paced program that delved deep into the four elements with a cast of interesting characters. There were only a couple of characters I didn’t like in the show, but even those characters came around eventually. To be honest, I hated the primary antagonist, Zuko for the first two Books. It wasn’t until a certain event in Book 3 that I started to like him, but I loved him after that. Jet also was dislikeable for the first two seasons, but even he redeemed himself eventually.

Azula, Toph, and Iroh were among my three favorite characters. Azula was everything I ever wanted in a villain. She was cunning, she was sinister, she was sadistic, and she was crazy. She had her close allies, and she was very charismatic. She never lost sight of her goal, but she never obsessed over it like Zuko did. She was also patient, took her time, and didn’t take her losses too heavily. She of course wasn’t the only villain, but God was she a great villain. Toph was my favorite amongst the hero party, and Iroh was the best of the neutral characters. But I don’t need to go in depth on why I loved all three of them.

Another thing I loved was the way they physically and culturally portrayed the elements. I’ve been obsessed with the four primary elemental forces since I was a kid, and would like to someday incorporate them into my own projects for the industry I’m entering. As such, I really appreciated the fact that all four elements were extremely cool. I found myself making a difficult decision as to which was coolest. Air and Fire were pretty standard, but Water and Earth impressed me most. Earth benders for the most part with pretty standard, but I really liked the way they molded the earth into specific shapes to create specific objects. Alternatively, Water benders were really impressive because of the sheer amount of stuff they were capable of. Snow bending, Ice bending, Grass bending, Vine bending, Water Absorption, Sweat manipulation, Water Cutting, Mud bending, and Blood bending, just to give an idea of how versatile it was.

I also loved the way that the four nations were portrayed. Racially, the Fire Nation primarily resembled Japanese folk, Earth Kingdom represented Chinese, the Water Tribe favored Inuit, and the Air Nomads were based off of Tibetan monks. Each nation was represented by a different color, Fire being red, Earth green, Water blue and Air was yellow/orange. Their cultural aspects came in the form of their clothing, skin tone, hair color, hairstyle, architecture, military structure and general ways of city living. It really showed a separation between nations, but at the same time a cultural similarity between them, a theme that the show thrived heavily on.

My only complaints with the show were that Zuko was so dislikeable for a majority of the show. Aside from that, there were a couple of specific plot points that should have been developed better. The final battle, while exciting should have been longer. Also the final attack I felt was a bit of a cop out considering the training Aang was supposed to be enduring throughout the show. The characters interacted well with each other and various relationships were formed and dissolved differently throughout the show. The heroes were fun, the villains were great, and all of the additional characters helped move along the show in a fun and interesting manner. But how did the movie fair?